UK Education: insights & opinions

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The government is increasingly emboldened in showing its contempt for parents, the teaching profession – the public in general – and in its lack of regard for evidence.

In pushing ahead with Mrs May’s obsession with reintroducing grammar schools, it ignores a wealth of evidence and even staunch opposition from its own side. The arguments have been well-rehearsed and the evidence widely discussed but just consider this one aspect. If it can’t be introduced ‘at a stroke’ (which it obviously can’t) a piecemeal, ‘free-for-all’ will have a destabilising effect as better-off families seek to bus their children to a new grammar ‘over the border’.

Furthermore, will there be a standard ‘entrance’ like the totally discredited 11+ of old (based on the faked results of Birt’s research) and what will the ‘second tier’ of schools be called, that replace the old secondary moderns? Many questions begged – so many that one guesses it’s not going to happen – but then again, they seem to be pressing ahead.

‘Free schools’, UTCs and ‘studio schools’: increasing evidence of these schools failing and closing, and of public money wasted. Yet, the government is again, pressing ahead with more ‘free schools’. To most of us, the evidence is damning but to the ideologues of the right, the failures and closures are entirely consistent with a free market. On the High Street, we are used to businesses opening and closing with regularity so why not in the ‘market’ of education? Well, we can see why but to THEM it’s just the way the market operates and ‘the best’ will survive. Trouble is, on the High Street, it’s the odd entrepreneur who loses his/her money and goes under, often to try again somewhere else, some other time – with schools, children lose out on their one chance of a good education.

Meanwhile, there is a funding crisis in schools, the combination of Cameron’s cash standstill in spending and rising prices, including rises in NI contributions for staff and the requirement to pay the apprenticeship levy. Heads, governors, parents are all providing testimony of shrinking budgets necessitating drastic action: cuts in support staff, cuts in teaching staff, cuts in curriculum offers, desperate requests for donations from parents to help fund the basics of teaching. The government’s only response is to keep repeating the record amount being spent on education. This ignores the extra that this funding is required to do including not only teach more children but fund the expensive ‘white elephant’ ‘free schools’, UTCs etc – and of course the inflated salaries of some of the Trust CEOs.

Perhaps voters will show their disdain for Conservatives’ actions on education at the ballot box in the forthcoming local elections.

We have continued to meet and discuss issues relating to local schools, especially academisations and ‘free’ schools. We have also conducted campaigns via direct action and through publicity.

NUAST – We were very concerned at the stories we were hearing about NUAST, its numbers and its inner turmoil. We lobbied an open evening in February where we distributed leaflets, spoke to prospective parents and even to the Chair of Governors. Subsequent lobbies did not take place due to lack of numbers. Following a Freedom of Information tussle with NUAST, and some research, we were able to obtain and publish information that we believed to be highly damaging to NUAST; following an anonymous tip-off from a parent we were able to alert the local press to the sudden departure of the Principal; we fed information to the press but were unable to get them to publish the more damaging aspects of the information we received. A further FoI request is being sent to attempt to quantify current numbers at NUAST and examination outcomes. We plan to contact local schools potentially affected by NUAST recruitment and seek support in distributing literature.

Beeston FieldsPrimary – We learnt part-way into the so-called consultation that academisaton was imminent. We wrote and used Freedom of Information to reveal the shoddy nature of the process which we then publicised. We tried to put pressure on the Governors and wrote to the Secretary of State – a contact which went unacknowledged. Once again, the press failed to pick up and publicise this story and we understand the school has become an academy under the ‘Flying High’ Trust.

Edwalton Primary – Also to be academised with ‘Flying High’, this primary school appeared to be going through the same process as Beeston Fields. We once again wrote and put the case against and also supported a parent who became active but could not drum up enough support for a concerted opposition.

We have kept track, as far as possible, with other plans and developments locally in the hope that, if necessary, we can react to potential academisations or new ‘free’ schools.

The election saw a depressing result for HOOS as the Conservatives have vowed to accelerate the pace of academisations and increase the number of ‘free’ schools. The one ray of light was the change of heart of the Labour Party who now oppose ‘free’ schools and have talked about taking all schools back into democratic control. Groups like HOOS have kept the arguments for democratic control of state-funded schools alive and we must continue to do so.

Not a Nottingham story, but it’s important to realise what is happening elsewhere. We hear that, indeed, all is far from well at The Richmond Park Academy, successor to the former Shene School, a stone’s throw from the leafy environs of the deer park.

Richmond Park achieved a ‘Good’ OFSTED in 2012 so is anticipating another visit any time soon and there would, in any case, be anxiety at the prospect of being inspected under a reputedly tougher ‘framework’. Unfortunately, the school seems to be faced with a massive deficit (the figure one million pounds is being bandied about) and this has prompted desperate and chaotic measures in an attempt to solve the mess. This has led to hastily rewritten and imposed new job descriptions, mass staff walkouts (we hear the entire admin team has upped and left) and union meetings replacing the usual first day inset activities.

We are not sure how the school has found itself in this situation but it may only be an extreme example of what is facing all schools: rising costs from inflation and staff wage increases – however modest – and additional employers’ National Insurance contributions, at a time when school budgets will, the Conservative Government has promised, remain static in cash terms.

The Conservatives probably think they have ‘won’ the argument, mainly by asserting that academies perform better and by including in their latest Education Bill a provision that so-called ‘coasting’ schools (along with those deemed to be ‘failing’ by OFSTED) should be turned forthwith into academies. We know, of course, that, intellectually at least, the argument is not won at all. To add weight to our argument, here is some written evidence, submitted to the parliamentary ‘Bill’ committee for that bill, which has just appeared on the official parliamentary website. Please read the highlighted text below:

Professor Gorard is an expert on school compositions, school outcomes, and interventions to reduce the poverty gradient in attainment at school. He is the author of Overcoming disadvantage in education, London: Routledge…

The other blog I run, ‘Hands Off Our Schools’ has been hearing rumblings from NUAST for some time: how well is recruitment going, how many students and staff are jumping ship? Yesterday, a parents sent a comment to us which I’ve just published and now am reblogging here.

The following anonymous comment was received by this website yesterday, 15 July:

“My son is currently a student at NUAST. I made the decision to move him there last year as we were extremely unhappy with his previous school (another academy) for various reasons and as he has an interest and aptitude for science and engineering I naively thought this would be a great opportunity for him. I am politically opposed to academy schools, however you try finding a school in Nottingham that isn’t one!

He started in September and was initially really excited and enthusiastic about his new school. He was looking forward to using the fantastic new equipment and taking part in some exciting extracurricular activities. The school was full of shiny promises. He was patient about the situation with the building not being ready because he was assured that once they moved everything would be wonderful.

That nice Nick Gibb, Schools Minister, has told us that, at some point in the future, all children will have to take the EBACC.

This set of letters first entered our consciousness around January 2011, as I recall. The much lamented Michael Gove had suddenly announced that GCSE outcomes would be measured by EBACC, which was short for ‘English Baccalaureate’. At the time my school was about to hold our ‘options’ evening for Year 9 students. Gove had decreed that, henceforth, students and schools would in part be measured by whether students had achieved the EBACC, a kind of modern version of matriculation. You didn’t get a certificate, or anything but you were deemed to have achieved it if you had got Grade Cs or above in English, Maths, Science (not BTec, of course!) a Humanity and a Language (ancient ones such as Greek and Latin were included but not ‘community languages’). I was tasked with preparing a leaflet for parents: no easy job when, in fact, nobody seemed to know much detail. In typical Gove manner, the ‘policy’ had been announced with scant regard for the consternation and chaos it would cause (two and a half years later, he did the same sort of thing with the ‘no resits’ diktat).

Now, of course, we know that the EBACC is a combination of allegedly worthy, ‘academic’ and ‘rigorous’ subjects and Gibb has, in true Goveian manner, announced it will happen. Apparently it’s about ‘social justice’, because all those deprived backstreet kids are ‘entitled’ to be told what they should learn by Mr Gibb. He knows what’s good for you.

A teacher friend of mine met Gibb at a high level reception a few months back, where my friend was loudly rubbishing OFSTED, who had, to be fair, just rubbished my friend’s school. Gibb heard and had him taken aside where he listened carefully to what my friend had to say about the iniquities of the OFSTED inspection. Gibb undertook to follow up and feedback. Needless to say, a while later a minion contacted my friend to say Mr Gibb was unable to intervene, which he must have known at the time. A smooth operator, is Mr Gibb!

The EBACC announcement seems a bit cack-handed in comparison, but this is now post-election and the Tories can just about do what they like. No need to explain where all the language teachers will come from let alone organise recruitment, training and so on. Apparently, something called ‘the market’ will do that.

Two local primary schools are facing ‘academisation’ to become part of The Flying High Trust by September 2015.

Campaigners like ‘Hands Off Our Schools’ are opposed to this process for reasons that have been aired before on this blog and elsewhere. Others who are fair-minded just think that, if this really is the best way forward for their school, the matter should be fully and openly debated, with the arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’ properly aired and all the stakeholders given the information they need to make a fully-informed decision – and that those ‘consulted’ should have a means of expressing their opinion clearly, such as a secret ballot. We are confident that, in such a situation, many people would be persuaded by our arguments and, if those proposing or supporting ‘academisation’ are so sure of the benefits, they too would be prepared to argue and debate openly.

But they’re not.

Here’s an item I posted yesterday on the ‘Hands Off Our Schools’ blog: